► The Emergency Economic Stabilization Act of 2008, commonly known as the bailout plan, was one of the most important pieces of legislation in 2008. To…
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▼ The Emergency Economic Stabilization Act of 2008, commonly known as the bailout plan, was one of the most important pieces of legislation in 2008. To discern the factors that influenced representatives’ decisions on the bailout bill, I hypothesize that ideological extremism, party pressure, interest groups, and economic conditions are the most influential factors. The results suggest that ideology was important for the first bailout vote, while party pressure was influential for the second bailout vote. In the analysis of the electoral consequence of the bailout vote, the results suggest that while the bailout bill has no electoral implications.
Advisors/Committee Members: Robert Grafstein.

Li, R. (2009). Party pressure, organized interests and economic conditions: the politics of the Emergency Economic Stabilization Act of 2008. (Masters Thesis). University of Georgia. Retrieved from http://purl.galileo.usg.edu/uga_etd/li_ruoxi_200908_ma

Li R. Party pressure, organized interests and economic conditions: the politics of the Emergency Economic Stabilization Act of 2008. [Masters Thesis]. University of Georgia; 2009. Available from: http://purl.galileo.usg.edu/uga_etd/li_ruoxi_200908_ma

► Research about congressional elections has almost exclusively focused on congressional general elections. The purpose of this thesis is to begin to address the gap in…
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▼ Research about congressional elections has almost exclusively focused on congressional general elections. The purpose of this thesis is to begin to address the gap in the literature by analyzing trends related to congressional primaries. The empirical analysis relies on an original dataset that comprises all Democratic and Republican candidates for the U.S. House of Representatives from 2000 to 2010. The first half of the empirical analysis considers the factors that influence the emergence of different types of candidates in primaries. The second half discusses the variables that play a part in the outcome of congressional primaries. After estimating several statistical models, I demonstrate the importance of incumbency and district partisanship in the dynamics of primaries. The thesis serves as a launching-off point for a broader research agenda related to primary elections and the impact of actions taken by members of Congress.
Advisors/Committee Members: Jamie L. Carson.

► This research explores the connections between campaign contributions, congressional behavior, and electoral outcomes. Previous research on the role of money in politics has focused primarily…
(more)

▼ This research explores the connections between campaign contributions, congressional behavior, and electoral outcomes. Previous research on the role of money in politics has focused primarily on the influence of political action committees and other organized interests, despite the fact that individual contributions account for over 50 percent of the donations members of Congress receive. This research ad- dresses the influence members??? financial ties with affluent individual donors has on their roll call voting, bill sponsorship and primary election prospects. The results suggest big donors shift members further to the ideological right and decrease their likelihood of introducing direct government spending bills in Congress. These financial ties also influence the electoral landscape for incumbents in the primary election by giving Republican incumbents an electoral edge and increasing the chances Democratic incumbents face a tough primary election battle. This research suggests individual donors influence political outcomes with implications for policy outcomes, representation, and party polarization.
Advisors/Committee Members: Peterson, David (advisor).

► Over the past half-century, the use of temporary authorizations - authorizations of funding or operations that expire at a given point - has proliferated. Congress…
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▼ Over the past half-century, the use of temporary authorizations - authorizations of funding or operations that expire at a given point - has proliferated. Congress began using temporary authorizations as a control mechanism in the 1960s, in an effort to gain effective oversight control over the military. Later in the decade, many scholars came to think that temporary authorizations gave authorizing committees leverage over appropriators in the fight over how much money various programs should receive. By the end of the decade, this mechanism was being used across the domestic and international policy domains. Using data for the years 1970 to 1994, I test whether temporary authorizations do in fact increase program oversight or influence the level of funding that public programs receive. The results of several multi-variate analyses show that temporary authorizations do not improve the level of funding that a program receives. Additionally, the analyses show that temporary authorizations do not facilitate ex post oversight - committees hold hearings at a relatively consistent level over time. However, temporary authorizations do facilitate ex ante oversight by opening up the legislation governing the program for adjustment. If temporary authorizations do not facilitate oversight or improve the level of funding a program receives, why does Congress use this mechanism? In chapter 3, I argue that temporary authorizations serve as a control mechanism for creating a stable policy environment by channeling policy change into discrete times when the authorization expires. By having reauthorizations, members of Congress can be assured that deals that have been struck in the legislative bargaining process will remain in place for the length of the authorization. The results of several multi-variate analyses show that temporary authorizations do serve in large measure to determine when legislative policy change does occur. Data show that the expiration of an authorization is the strongest factor in determining when legislative change will occur. This factor is more powerful than other factors such as the volume of hearings held or the amount of media coverage that is conducted. These findings show how temporary authorizations serve to allow Congress to control its internal and external environments by channeling the times during which policy change occurs.
Advisors/Committee Members: Scott Ainsworth.

Hall, T. E. (2002). When things really happen : the role of reauthorizations in the process of policy change. (Doctoral Dissertation). University of Georgia. Retrieved from http://purl.galileo.usg.edu/uga_etd/hall_thad_e_200208_phd

Chicago Manual of Style (16th Edition):

Hall, Thad Edward. “When things really happen : the role of reauthorizations in the process of policy change.” 2002. Doctoral Dissertation, University of Georgia. Accessed February 22, 2019.
http://purl.galileo.usg.edu/uga_etd/hall_thad_e_200208_phd.

Hall TE. When things really happen : the role of reauthorizations in the process of policy change. [Internet] [Doctoral dissertation]. University of Georgia; 2002. [cited 2019 Feb 22].
Available from: http://purl.galileo.usg.edu/uga_etd/hall_thad_e_200208_phd.

Council of Science Editors:

Hall TE. When things really happen : the role of reauthorizations in the process of policy change. [Doctoral Dissertation]. University of Georgia; 2002. Available from: http://purl.galileo.usg.edu/uga_etd/hall_thad_e_200208_phd

► Current research on legislatures sees several competing schools of thought: distributive, informational, and partisan theories of legislative organization dominate the literature. This study contends that…
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▼ Current research on legislatures sees several competing schools of thought: distributive, informational, and partisan theories of legislative organization dominate the literature. This study contends that many of the differences between the contemporary theories can be resolved by accounting for the type of policy under consideration.|Chapter 3 of the study examines the creation of party leadership groups in the United States House of Representatives for the 94th through the 103rd Congresses. Most researchers have dismissed the creation of these groups as inconsequential and symbolic. The analysis presented herein finds otherwise. Using a Monte Carlo design, it concludes that the creation of the leadership groups is systematic. The floor median aims to create a leadership body that is representative of his preferences. The median voter is a member of the majority party. Hence he must temper his choices according to his party alignment. Ultimately, the median's true preferences are revealed toward the majority party's caucus median. In this case, the median voter selects a leadership cadre with an ideology somewhat to the left of his own. It is also found that the floor creates leadership groups that are ideologically homogeneous as opposed to covering a broad range of ideological positions. Additionally it is determined that the selection of the Speaker of the House does not follow an ideological pattern; the popular view that Speakers are chosen for charisma and competence rather than for ideological reasons is supported by the study.|Chapter 4 turns its attention to the dynamics of voting on the floor of the House. Adopting Lowi's typology of public policy (1964, 1972), and a variant of Kingdon's model of congressional voting (1989), policy motions from the 103rd Congress are grouped according to policy content. The votes are treated as dependent variables. Four groups of independent variables are used to model the dynamics of floor voting: committees, parties, ideology, and members' narrow, district-specific interests. The relative weight of the independent variables fluctuates according to the type of policy under consideration. These findings are taken as support of Lowi's thesis that different types of public policy produce different types of politics.
Advisors/Committee Members: Charles S. Bullock, III.

▼ Political agenda-setting research primarily studies how political institutions direct policy attention and gives little consideration to individual decision-making (Baumgartner and Jones 2009; Kingdon 1995; Baumgartner et al. 2011). This dissertation examines policymakers’ strategic communications to illuminate the important but less understood agenda-setting patterns of individuals. The normalization of social media platforms, like Twitter, gives U.S. senators a new platform to aggregate their policy priorities into a complex agenda that reveals individual decision-making and prioritization. Senators face pressures from constituents, the party, and the institution that lead them to structure unique agenda setting patterns that have implications for both policy and representation. Using a new dataset of all tweets by U.S. senators, I offer new insight into how individual senators divide their limited attention. First, senators must strike a balance between policy and representation because attention to policy results in less time for constituent issues. Second, for political priorities, there is an asymmetric pattern of partisan attention such that Republicans prioritize politics and use partisan rhetoric more often in their political communication. By using a hybrid media measure like Twitter, I glean useful insight into a politician’s agenda to not only understand how politicians rank issues but more broadly the role of policy, politics and representation within a senator’s agenda.
Advisors/Committee Members: Jones, Bryan D. (advisor), Theriault, Sean (committee member), Wlezien, Chris (committee member), Baumgartner, Frank (committee member), Sparrow, Bartholomew (committee member).

► This dissertation explores how individual members of Congress pursue policy goals by engaging with the bureaucracy. This behavior, which I call “backchannel policymaking”, is a…
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▼ This dissertation explores how individual members of Congress pursue policy goals by engaging with the bureaucracy. This behavior, which I call “backchannel policymaking”, is a new way of thinking about policymaking and representational behavior, distinct from previously studied channels of the lawmaking process like roll call votes or bill introductions. I develop and test a theory to explain why members of Congress choose to engage with the bureaucracy. I consider whether backchannel policymaking serves as an alternative path for policy influence, which members of Congress use to circumvent the legislative process. My analyses, which focus on senators’ policy contact with the bureaucracy during the 110th and the 111th Congresses and draw on original bureaucratic records from the U.S. Departments of Labor and Homeland Security, reveal that a senator’s institutional position, constraints, and behavior within the legislative process predict her engagement in backchannel policymaking. These findings illustrate how members of Congress try to influence policy outside of the formal lawmaking process.
Advisors/Committee Members: Sulkin, Tracy (advisor), Sulkin, Tracy (Committee Chair), Kuklinski, James (committee member), Gaines, Brian (committee member), Sin, Gisela (committee member).

► This research explores the connections between campaign contributions, congressional behavior, and electoral outcomes. Previous research on the role of money in politics has focused primarily…
(more)

▼ This research explores the connections between campaign contributions, congressional behavior, and electoral outcomes. Previous research on the role of money in politics has focused primarily on the influence of political action committees and other organized interests, despite the fact that individual contributions account for over 50 percent of the donations members of Congress receive. This research ad- dresses the influence members? financial ties with affluent individual donors has on their roll call voting, bill sponsorship and primary election prospects. The results suggest big donors shift members further to the ideological right and decrease their likelihood of introducing direct government spending bills in Congress. These financial ties also influence the electoral landscape for incumbents in the primary election by giving Republican incumbents an electoral edge and increasing the chances Democratic incumbents face a tough primary election battle. This research suggests individual donors influence political outcomes with implications for policy outcomes, representation, and party polarization.
Advisors/Committee Members: Peterson, David (advisor), Kellstedt, Paul (advisor), Whitten , Guy (committee member), Vedlitz, Arnold (committee member).

► Attention is a disruptive force in politics; it is also a scarce resource. Decision-makers must prioritize which issues receive attention—typically educing policy change—and which issues…
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▼ Attention is a disruptive force in politics; it is also a scarce resource. Decision-makers must prioritize which issues receive attention—typically educing policy change—and which issues are ignored. While issue attention is a key component of policymaking at various levels of analysis, these differing analytical constructs are often compartmentalized and treated as separate from a theoretical standpoint. This study uses the concept of issue attention to analyze connections between two such levels of policymaking abstraction: Congress and policy subsystems. Specifically, issue attention from the two major parties in Congress is analyzed using a unique dataset of over 43,000 speeches given on the floor of the House of Representatives. Times series analysis indicates the parties engage in a clear, substantive policy debate using these floor speeches. More importantly, the minority party is actually able to influence the majority party’s level of attention to specific policy issues—when the minority party shifts focus, the majority party responds. Finally, a case study on U.S. offshore oil and natural gas drilling policy demonstrates how changes to partisan issue attention interact with other exogenous effects—e.g., economic indicators, public opinion, and focusing events—to disrupt subsystem dynamics and result in significant policy change. Taken together, the findings from this study highlight how shifts in attention at the highest levels of decision-making directly impact lower levels of policymaking, such as policy subsystems. The policy process is broad and complex, but understanding these dynamic connections brings the system into sharper contrast.
Advisors/Committee Members: Krutz, Glen (advisor), Jenkins-Smith, Hank (committee member), Carlson, Deven (committee member), Gaddie, R. Keith (committee member), Baumgartner, Frank (committee member), Chappell, David (committee member).

► Party polarization has fundamentally altered the political landscape in the United States. For good or ill, it has increased the contentiousness of elections, it…
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▼ Party polarization has fundamentally altered
the political landscape in the United States. For good or ill, it
has increased the contentiousness of elections, it has changed the
conduct of government business, and it potentially affects the
quality of representation many citizens receive in Congress.
Nonetheless, explanations of its emergence remain incomplete, often
being time-bound or region-bound, and most ignore the possibility
that party strategy lies at the heart of this development. In
response to this lacuna, in this dissertation I present evidence
that over the past thirty years party leaders have helped bring
about party polarization in Congress in the way they have
distributed party campaign funds to candidates. I find party
leaders helped make congressional caucuses more ideologically
homogeneous over time by providing party support to ideological
challengers and open-seat contestants and thereby significantly
improving their likelihood of gaining seats; by targeting resources
toward races against moderate incumbents of the opposite party with
great success; and by providing party monies to protect their own
moderate incumbents at the expense of making those incumbents more
vulnerable to seat-challenges and targeting by the other party.
These allocation decisions contributed to the replacement of
moderates in Congress with ideological new members and made the
party caucuses in Congress more ideologically unified and
distinctive over time.
Advisors/Committee Members: Geoffrey Layman, Committee Member, David Campbell , Committee Member, John Griffin , Committee Member, Ben Radcliff, Committee Member, Christina Wolbrecht , Committee Chair.

► This project takes an in-depth look at the role that media coverage of both individual members of Congress and Congress as a whole plays in…
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▼ This project takes an in-depth look at the role that media coverage of both
individual members of Congress and Congress as a whole plays in shaping approval
of legislators and the legislative branch. I argue that by examining what the media
choose to cover and how the media cover it, we can learn more about the standards
by which judgments of political performance take place. As such, I also contend
that differences between the tone and substance in which the media cover individual
legislators compared to how they cover the legislative branch go a long way to explaining
why Americans cast favor upon those they send to Congress and cast doubt
on Congress itself.
The essential dichotomy examined in the project, based on Thomas Patterson's
(1993) assessment of the changing nature of how the mass media cover campaigning,
splits reporting on Congress into governing coverage and game coverage. Governing
coverage deals more with substantive issues, policy problems, and signals that
business is taking place. Game coverage, on the other hand, is more concerned with
the parliamentary struggles between actors and parties to pass legislation and accrue
power; it treats politicians as strategic actors always competing for advantages.
Game coverage also focuses heavily on winning and losing. I argue that the over time
focus on either game or governing aspects of legislating and representing will drive
assessments of members of Congress and Congress itself. More specifically, I analyze
how game frame coverage is likely to spur negative job approval, while governing frame coverage drives positive assessments of job performance.
Advisors/Committee Members: Kellstedt, Paul (advisor), Peterson, David (committee member), Pacek, Alex (committee member), Ritter, Kurt (committee member).

► This dissertation contains three essays that examine how institutional design— independent of the behavior of political actors—influences electoral outcomes. First, during the late nineteenth century,…
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▼ This dissertation contains three essays that examine how institutional design— independent of the behavior of political actors—influences electoral outcomes. First, during the late nineteenth century, research has shown that existing norms and rules governing the redistricting process gave state legislatures enormous discretion in the timing and manner in which they redrew congressional boundaries. However, the Supreme Court rulings during the 1960s altered these redistricting rules. As such, a process that once fostered great competition and turnover now centers on maintaining partisan control within states. I seek to understand how representatives respond to changes in their districts in the modern era. Utilizing an experimental approach, I find that certain redistricting plans lead members of the House to move towards the extreme ends of the ideological spectrum. Second, studies of congressional elections often overlook an important component of the process—primary elections. Given the overwhelming partisanship of a large proportion of districts, many elections are essentially decided well before November. Additionally, primary election laws are not uniform across states as are those governing general elections. Therefore, I seek to understand how certain primary election laws can influence who runs and ultimately wins House primary elections. I find that imposing term
limits on state legislators and increasing the diversity of who can participate in a primary produce systematic differences in quality challenger emergence and the distribution of votes among candidates. I also find substantial differences between Democratic and Republican candidates in terms of their performance and success. Third, previous research on the effect of disaster declarations on electoral politics has produced conflicting results. I attempt to reconcile these inconsistencies by reconsidering the theoretical framework used to understand disaster assistance and using unique and innovative data to test the effects of electoral value on aid received as well as the effect of assistance on the public's opinion of the president. I find that disaster declarations differ meaningfully from other actions described as unilateral powers, presidents do not consider electoral value when providing relief, and respondents' evaluations of presidential actions are almost entirely driven by partisanship.
Advisors/Committee Members: Jamie L. Carson.

► This dissertation contains three essays that examine how institutional design— independent of the behavior of political actors—influences electoral outcomes. First, during the late nineteenth century,…
(more)

▼ This dissertation contains three essays that examine how institutional design— independent of the behavior of political actors—influences electoral outcomes. First, during the late nineteenth century, research has shown that existing norms and rules governing the redistricting process gave state legislatures enormous discretion in the timing and manner in which they redrew congressional boundaries. However, the Supreme Court rulings during the 1960s altered these redistricting rules. As such, a process that once fostered great competition and turnover now centers on maintaining partisan control within states. I seek to understand how representatives respond to changes in their districts in the modern era. Utilizing an experimental approach, I find that certain redistricting plans lead members of the House to move towards the extreme ends of the ideological spectrum. Second, studies of congressional elections often overlook an important component of the process—primary elections. Given the overwhelming partisanship of a large proportion of districts, many elections are essentially decided well before November. Additionally, primary election laws are not uniform across states as are those governing general elections. Therefore, I seek to understand how certain primary election laws can influence who runs and ultimately wins House primary elections. I find that imposing term
limits on state legislators and increasing the diversity of who can participate in a primary produce systematic differences in quality challenger emergence and the distribution of votes among candidates. I also find substantial differences between Democratic and Republican candidates in terms of their performance and success. Third, previous research on the effect of disaster declarations on electoral politics has produced conflicting results. I attempt to reconcile these inconsistencies by reconsidering the theoretical framework used to understand disaster assistance and using unique and innovative data to test the effects of electoral value on aid received as well as the effect of assistance on the public's opinion of the president. I find that disaster declarations differ meaningfully from other actions described as unilateral powers, presidents do not consider electoral value when providing relief, and respondents' evaluations of presidential actions are almost entirely driven by partisanship.
Advisors/Committee Members: Jamie L. Carson.

► Organisations are increasingly looking beyond their organisational boundaries to evaluate how resources can be utilised to survive and grow the business. Different inter-organisational relationships have…
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▼ Organisations are increasingly looking beyond their organisational boundaries to evaluate how resources can be utilised to survive and grow the business. Different inter-organisational relationships have emerged as important resources in supply chains. The decision about what type of inter-firm relationship is appropriate for a specific circumstance appears complex and demands a particular degree of managerial attention. Supply chain researchers agree that in many instances, not all inter-firm relationships need to be either cooperative or collaborative and that there is no unique relationship suitable for all circumstances. While marketing channel theories and supply chain theories can provide some explanation for a wide range of inter-organisational relationships, the existing literature lacks a comprehensive explanation of the interplay between the attributes of relationships, the desired outcomes and differing inter-firm relationships. Consequently, this research seeks to fill the gap in the literature by first explaining the power that relational factors such as trust, power, interdependency, longevity and sharing, have in predicting the types of inter-firm relationships a firm participates in and, second, by understanding and discussing the linkages between achieved benefits, such as reduced costs, improved quality, flexibility, speed and reliability of an organisation involved in an array of relationships. In order to address the gap a theoretical framework was tested through a three stages methodology, which involved convergent interview, self-administered questionnaire and a case study. Qualitative data was analysed by using content analysis techniques in which patterns were identified from the data while quantitative data was analysed using confirmatory factor analysis and multiple regression analysis. The road freight transport industry was chosen as the research setting to examine inter-organisational relationships because of its complexity and competitiveness in the Australian setting. This thesis concludes that trucking firms are only marginally shifting from loose to closer relationships, so they tend primarily to be adversarial players and as such expect to achieve four primary outcomes. These are improvements in operational cost, flexibility, quality and reliability. – Abstract

► The purpose of this dissertation is to supply a simple and synthetic theory to help us to understand the development and value of organized intraparty…
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▼ The purpose of this dissertation is to supply a simple and synthetic theory to help us to understand the development and value of organized intraparty blocs. I will argue that lawmakers rely on these intraparty organizations to resolve several serious collective action and coordination problems that otherwise make it difficult for rank-and-file party members to successfully challenge their congressional leaders for control of policy outcomes. In the empirical chapters of this dissertation, I will show that intraparty organizations empower dissident lawmakers to resolve their collective action and coordination challenges by providing selective incentives to cooperative members, transforming public good policies into excludable accomplishments, and instituting rules and procedures to promote group decision-making. And, in tracing the development of intraparty organization through several well-known examples of party infighting, I will demonstrate that intraparty organizations have played pivotal – yet largely unrecognized – roles in critical legislative battles, including turn-of-the-century economic struggles, mid-century battles over civil rights legislation, and contemporary debates over national health care policy.

► Academic studies have often emphasized the law-making aspects of Congress to the exclusion of examining how Congress uses its investigative power. This is despite the…
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▼ Academic studies have often emphasized the law-making aspects of Congress to the exclusion of examining how Congress uses its investigative power. This is despite the fact that Congress possesses great power to compel testimony and documents from public and private persons alike, and that exercises of the investigative power are among the most notable public images of Congress. While several recent studies have considered investigations in the context of relations between the executive and legislative branches, far less effort has been committed to looking at how much Congress uses coercive investigative power to gather information on non-governmental actors.I develop several new datasets to examine the historical and recent use of investigations of both governmental and non-governmental institutions. A major component of this work is a comprehensive study of all authorizations of subpoena power granted to committees over the period 1792-1944. I find that for both Executive and outside subjects, divided control of government was positively associated with the volume of investigations in the House, but not in the Senate. Through extended qualitative examination of contemporary news stories and other secondary sources, I consider how partisan and institutional factors influenced the focus, scope, and intensity of investigative projects, as well as which legislative chamber and committee came to undertake the information-gathering work. I demonstrate how stronger party leaderships limited opportunities for members to conduct investigations, and where necessary, shifted politically-sensitive subjects to venues – within the chamber, to the other chamber, or to joint committees – that would be more favorable to the desired results. Nevertheless, it was in the Senate that individual members consistently possessed greater opportunity to initiate inquiries to develop policy expertise as well as those that could be dangerous to their own party's interests. Confronting changes to how Congress has made such grants since World War II, I examine the exercise of investigative power in its capacity to generate media coverage and witnesses' invocations of the Fifth Amendment protection against self-incrimination. Whereas the House and Senate experienced an extended period of near-parity in the quantity of investigations until the mid-1990s, since that time the Senate has been the more involved and consistent actor. The number of different investigative topics receiving media attention has also declined since the early 1990s. Increasingly, Congress's investigative initiative focuses on a small set of subjects, which often receive simultaneous scrutiny from a number of different corners. To help motivate the evolution of Congressional investigations, I consider the Legislative branch's relations with the Executive and Judicial branches, as well as concerted attempts by the Legislature to build institutional capacity. I argue that the growth of the State and increased complexity of society have complicated Congress's investigative task,…

Hanley, J. I. (2012). Legislative Limelight: Investigations by the United States Congress. (Thesis). University of California – Berkeley. Retrieved from http://www.escholarship.org/uc/item/4z47565z

Note: this citation may be lacking information needed for this citation format:Not specified: Masters Thesis or Doctoral Dissertation

Chicago Manual of Style (16th Edition):

Hanley, John Ignatius. “Legislative Limelight: Investigations by the United States Congress.” 2012. Thesis, University of California – Berkeley. Accessed February 22, 2019.
http://www.escholarship.org/uc/item/4z47565z.

Note: this citation may be lacking information needed for this citation format:Not specified: Masters Thesis or Doctoral Dissertation

MLA Handbook (7th Edition):

Hanley, John Ignatius. “Legislative Limelight: Investigations by the United States Congress.” 2012. Web. 22 Feb 2019.

► Studies of representation have shown that, generally, Representatives and Senators are responsive to constituent opinion. However, research focused on the policy congruence of elected officials…
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▼ Studies of representation have shown that, generally, Representatives and Senators are responsive to constituent opinion. However, research focused on the policy congruence of elected officials has lacked attention to the important intermediate step of how members of Congress learn about district views. What practices do congressional offices engage in to develop their understanding of constituent opinion? Using data from an original survey of congressional staff from 107 House offices, my dissertation explores how congressional offices process information about constituent opinion, focusing, in particular, on how Representatives and their staffs use constituent correspondence to inform their views of district interests. The dissertation provides the first systematic account of how constituent letters, emails, phone calls, faxes, and social media contacts are treated in congressional offices. I find that offices have different policies for which types of constituent correspondence they will record in their contact databases, and how they will summarize and communicate the content of district correspondence to others in the office. In the dissertation, I test several explanations for this observed variation across offices, and I explore how the correspondence practices that offices adopt impact Representativesâ legislative behavior. While office decisions about how to treat constituent correspondence do not seem to relate to Representativesâ abilities to accurately assess constituent opinion or to respond to constituent preferences in their roll-call voting, the correspondence management practices that offices adopt do relate to their success in advancing important legislative initiatives through Congress. Offices that take advantage of the information that correspondence offers are more likely to see their policy proposals move further through the legislative process. By concentrating on how Representatives come to understand the policy preferences of their constituents, my dissertation elaborates on how the representative-district relationship functions and assesses how meaningful a role constituency views play in congressional behavior.
Advisors/Committee Members: Larry M. Bartels (committee member), Bruce I. Oppenheimer (committee member), John R. Wright (committee member), Alan E. Wiseman (chair).

► The responsiveness of government agencies to elected officials is a central question in democratic governance. While important scholarship has demonstrated that elected officials have tools…
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▼ The responsiveness of government agencies to elected officials is a central question in democratic governance. While important scholarship has demonstrated that elected officials have tools they can successfully implement to encourage agency responsiveness, there is little empirical work on the effect of structure on political control. In a series of three papers, I fill that gap in the literature by examining the structural features that make certain agencies more or less responsive to their political principals. First, I develop new estimates of structural independence based on new data on 50 different structural features of 321 federal agencies in the federal executive establishment. Second, I examine federal executivesâ own perceptions about their agenciesâ responsiveness to political principals and find that an agency faced with multiple missions will prioritize presidential policy demands over those of Congress. Finally, I find that agencies that are insulated from political review are less likely to comply with statutory deadlines and often delay in providing Congress with information regarding agency policy. Considered together, these three papers suggest that variation in agency structure across the bureaucracy influences bureaucratic responsiveness to democratically elected officials.
Advisors/Committee Members: David E. Lewis (chair), Joshua D. Clinton (committee member), Bruce I. Oppenheimer (committee member), Kevin M. Stack (committee member), Alan E. Wiseman (committee member).

► Current public debate about legislative redistricting in the United States most commonly champions reforms toward nonpartisan commissions as promoting competition and balance, while assailing partisan…
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▼ Current public debate about legislative redistricting in the United States most commonly champions reforms toward nonpartisan commissions as promoting competition and balance, while assailing partisan gerrymanders as ossifying incumbents, often adverse to the will of the voters. This dissertation challenges this conventional wisdom along several dimensions using a simulation model and empirical evidence from survey data and four decades of congressional election results.
The dissertation is broadly divided into three parts, each of which employs the simulation model, detailed in Chapter 2, accompanied by empirical evidence. The first part, comprising Chapter 3, tests the effects of interacting redistricting institutions with national partisan tides (i.e. wave elections) on party composition and turnover in Congress. The middle section, comprising Chapter 4 and an addendum to Chapter 5, alters the model to fit the legal requirements under the Voting Rights Act to create majority-minority districts, first with respect to tides, and then with respect to voter welfare of minority voters. The last part, comprising Chapters 5 and 6, tests the effects of these institutions, also interacted with tides and party polarization, on different measures of democratic representation or voter welfare.
Supported by both the model and evidence, the dissertation finds that maps drawn by nonpartisan institutions do yield closer election contests and greater sensitivity to tides. And while nonpartisan maps often succeed in electing a median delegation member responsive to tides, they perform extremely poorly in electing individual members that personally represent the voters in their own constituencies. On the other hand, aggressive partisan maps, while biased in favor of the gerrymandering party when tides are neutral, are very responsive to tides adverse to the gerrymandering party, both with respect to competitiveness and turnover. Additionally, aggressive partisan maps elect delegations that perform moderately well on three out of four measures of voter welfare. They perform badly on the fourth measure, policy median welfare, when tides are low, but can achieve the best results among all maps under strong tides in both directions. The dissertation also provides additional insight into the effects of majority- minority districting on partisan composition and voter welfare, and also the effects of increased party polarization.
Advisors/Committee Members: Canes-Wrone, Brandice (advisor).

► This dissertation investigates why some members of Congress (MCs) commit themselves to lawmaking in the pursuit of changing public policy – in other words, why…
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▼ This dissertation investigates why some members of Congress (MCs) commit themselves to lawmaking in the pursuit of changing public policy – in other words, why some MCs behave as policy wonks. While the Framers envisioned that Congress would be the policymaking engine of the federal government and that some MCs would become master legislators, today Congress is routinely criticized for dysfunction and gridlock. In this context, the behavior of policy wonks is of normative and practical interest, but there remains relatively little research that focuses squarely on these members. I conceptualize policy wonks as MCs who commit to legislating by adopting intense, specialized, and consistent legislative agendas, and I identify policy wonks with a novel measure of legislative commitment based on these three components and using MCs’ slates of bill sponsorships from 1989 through 2008. Building on previous work on legislative entrepreneurship, I argue that MCs commit to legislating and act as policy wonks based on a strategic calculation that weighs the benefits that flow from this behavior against its costs. I find that legislative commitment is associated with MCs’ institutional positions, the characteristics of their districts, and future career advancement and legislative success. The implications of the research are mixed. While some MCs conform with the Framers’ expectations that they be committed legislators, not all the incentives in Congress are aligned to support MCs acting as policy wonks.
Advisors/Committee Members: Sulkin, Tracy (advisor), Sulkin, Tracy (Committee Chair), Sin, Gisela (committee member), Mondak, Jeffery (committee member), Kuklinski, James (committee member).

► The central question of this dissertation is “What makes law last?” I argue that when legislators seek out diverse sources of information, engage in deliberation,…
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▼ The central question of this dissertation is “What makes law last?” I argue that when legislators seek out diverse sources of information, engage in deliberation, and reach a substantive compromise, they pass the most durable law. To investigate legislative durability, I hand-collected a dataset, drawn from the volumes of the United States Code, that documents the longevity of all 268,935 provisions of federal law passed between 1789 and 2012. Through a combination of logistic and duration analysis I find that the most durable provisions are the subject of lengthy deliberation and are voted on before the last moments of a Congressional session. They are normally referred to multiple House and Senate committees and are enacted after Congress has gained institutional experience in a particular policy area. Durable laws also tend to be considered under open rules and exclude non-germane provisions. Finally, provision level durability is conditional on changes in control of Congress and the public’s preferences for a more or less active federal government.
Advisors/Committee Members: Jones, Bryan D. (advisor), Elkins, Zachary (committee member), Theriault, Sean (committee member), Wlezian, Chris (committee member), Roberts, Brian (committee member).

► Much of the academic literature on Congress has concentrated on the growing polarization in Congress and the significant changes in the organization of the legislative…
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▼ Much of the academic literature on Congress has concentrated on the growing
polarization in Congress and the significant changes in the organization of the legislative
process that have accompanied that polarization. This dissertation posits the theory that,
nevertheless, there is a substrata of legislation for which the process has not changed
substantially over the last forty years. The legislation is of relatively low saliency and
often deals primarily with the organizational structure of government agencies. The
process for this type of legislation is basically non-partisan and non-ideological. Two
comparative case studies will be used for the analysis: the legislative process leading to
the enactment of the Postal Reorganization Act of 1970, and Congressional efforts to
further reorganize the Postal Service, which began in 1995 and concluded with the
passage of the Postal Accountability and Enhancement Act of 2006.
Advisors/Committee Members: Pfiffner, James P (advisor).

► Much of the academic literature on Congress has concentrated on the growing polarization in Congress and the significant changes in the organization of the legislative…
(more)

▼ Much of the academic literature on Congress has concentrated on the growing
polarization in Congress and the significant changes in the organization of the legislative
process that have accompanied that polarization. This dissertation posits the theory that,
nevertheless, there is a substrata of legislation for which the process has not changed
substantially over the last forty years. The legislation is of relatively low saliency and
often deals primarily with the organizational structure of government agencies. The
process for this type of legislation is basically non-partisan and non-ideological. Two
comparative case studies will be used for the analysis: the legislative process leading to the enactment of the Postal Reorganization Act of 1970, and Congressional efforts to
further reorganize the Postal Service, which began in 1995 and concluded with the
passage of the Postal Accountability and Enhancement Act of 2006.
Advisors/Committee Members: Pfiffner, James P (advisor).

► This analysis considers the security-accountability paradox: in a democracy, how can the People consent to what they cannot see? Congress is the branch of government…
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▼ This analysis considers the security-accountability paradox: in a democracy, how can the People consent to what they cannot see? Congress is the branch of government most concerned with democratic representation and is directed by Article I to give a public accounting of expenditures from time to time. However, when it comes to national security and the intelligence community (IC), Congress has abdicated this responsibility and fails to use tools such as hearings to exercise meaningful oversight. This analysis lays out qualitative standards for adjudicating between responsible legislative delegation and irresponsible legislative abdication. It finds that in routinizing unvouchered funds through the CIA Act of 1949, Congress systematized abdication of budgetary control over the IC. Using data from the Comparative Agendas Project, this study finds that, since the CIA Act, Congress has failed to adequately compensate for its initial abdication through meaningful use of congressional IC hearings. Rather, Congress continues routinized abdication at the expense of accountability to the public.
Advisors/Committee Members: Tulis, Jeffrey (advisor), Theriault, Sean (committee member).

► Are competitive elections “good” for democracy? Competitive elections are said to symbolize the health of democracy, and their absence thus challenges the viability of the…
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▼ Are competitive elections “good” for democracy? Competitive elections are said to symbolize the health of democracy, and their absence thus challenges the viability of the political system. But, there are actually competing expectations about the consequences of competition on representation. Close elections may increase reelection-oriented legislators’ responsiveness to the interests of their constituents. However, time, effort, and resources spent campaigning in the district means time taken away from governing in Washington DC. Further, the increased focus on legislators’ reelection constituencies may drive them to be less likely to pursue the interests of the district as a whole, particularly in primary elections where the reelection constituency is the party base.
I investigate how primary competition affects legislators’ volume of activity, the issue content of this activity, and their levels of party loyalty. Using primary election data from the 1998-2008 election cycles and legislative behavior data from the 105th - 110th Congresses, my analyses compare the legislative behavior of MCs with and without primary opponents, the behavior of legislators before and during the primary election, and MCs’ behavior across Congresses. In turn, this provides insight into how primary competition affects legislative behavior, and, equally important, whether it promotes representation and responsiveness.
Advisors/Committee Members: Sulkin, Tracy E. (advisor), Sulkin, Tracy E. (Committee Chair), Bernhard, William T. (committee member), Kuklinski, James H. (committee member), Sin, Gisela (committee member).

► The Psychical Science Congress (PSC), held from August 21-25, 1893, was a division of the Science and Philosophy congresses of the World’s Congress Auxiliary held…
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▼ The Psychical Science Congress (PSC), held from August 21-25, 1893, was a division of the Science and Philosophy congresses of the World’s Congress Auxiliary held in conjunction with Chicago’s World Columbian Exposition. The first international congress devoted solely to psychical research, the PSC was initially conceived by John Curtis Bundy, editor of Chicago’s progressive spiritualist newspaper, the Religio-Philosophical Journal (R-PJ). Upon Bundy’s death in August 1892, organizational matters fell to Elliott Coues, an internationally famous natural scientist who became chairman of the PSC. The Congress drew into its fold a number of well-known figures of the fin de siècle including: Richard Hodgson and Frederic W. H. Myers of the London Society for Psychical Research; Benjamin Franklin Underwood, a noted freethinker who assumed editorship of the R-PJ following John Bundy’s death and who established it as the official organ of the PSC; Frances Willard, the internationally acclaimed head of the Women’ Christian Temperance Union and America’s most beloved woman leader; Lyman J. Gage, a corporate officer of the Columbian Exposition, president of Chicago’s First National Bank, and spiritualist who hosted séances in his Chicago home; and Lilian Whiting, a noted journalist and New Thought advocate whose uplifting address regarding the spiritual future to come was delivered on the final day of the PSC by her close friend, the actress Kate Field. These and other notable figures with interests in the occult who presented papers at the Psychical Science Congress drew large audiences in the Halls of Columbus and Washington at the Memorial Art Palace (now the Art Institute Building), making the Congress one of the most popular of all held under the auspices of World’s Congress Auxiliary.
In the decade from the mid-1880s to the mid-1890s Chicago was a center for American occult activity, boasting a number of spiritualist and theosophical organizations along with its own independent psychical research society, the Western Society for Psychical Research (WSPR). Organized in the summer of 1885, the WSPR was the largest urban psychical research society outside of Boston and its officers and membership provided the corps of organizational leadership which would form the local Arrangements Committee for the Psychical Science Congress. Though modeled after the London SPR, the Western Society for Psychical Research could not match the London group’s scientific standards and it practiced a ‘wilder’ variety of psychical research which betrayed its spiritualist leanings. As with the case of the American SPR which expired in 1889, becoming a branch of the London organization, the WSPR expired in 1890, ceasing all investigations of psychical and spiritual phenomena.
The Psychical Science Congress, along with the Theosophical Congress, held from September 15-17, 1893 as a divisional congress of the World’s Parliament of Religions, elevated the public’s awareness of spiritualism, psychical research, and theosophy as elements of…
Advisors/Committee Members: Micale, Mark S (advisor), Micale, Mark S (Committee Chair), Oberdeck, Kathryn J (committee member), Burkhardt, Richard W (committee member), Sommer, Andreas (committee member).

Andrick, J. M. (2016). A modern mecca of psychic forces: the Psychical Science Congress and the culture of progressive occultism in fin-de-siecle Chicago, 1885-1900. (Doctoral Dissertation). University of Illinois – Urbana-Champaign. Retrieved from http://hdl.handle.net/2142/95326

Chicago Manual of Style (16th Edition):

Andrick, John M. “A modern mecca of psychic forces: the Psychical Science Congress and the culture of progressive occultism in fin-de-siecle Chicago, 1885-1900.” 2016. Doctoral Dissertation, University of Illinois – Urbana-Champaign. Accessed February 22, 2019.
http://hdl.handle.net/2142/95326.

Andrick JM. A modern mecca of psychic forces: the Psychical Science Congress and the culture of progressive occultism in fin-de-siecle Chicago, 1885-1900. [Doctoral Dissertation]. University of Illinois – Urbana-Champaign; 2016. Available from: http://hdl.handle.net/2142/95326

► This dissertation, a collection of independent papers, explores the polarization of the United States Congress through the lens of primary elections, campaign finance, and party…
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▼ This dissertation, a collection of independent papers, explores the polarization of the United States Congress through the lens of primary elections, campaign finance, and party structures during a pivotal moment in American political history. Paper 1 focuses on the top two primary format and its potential in producing moderate candidates and legislators, while Paper 2 expounds on the deleterious consequences it poses for the party system as a whole, particularly in this modern era of both high polarization and high fragmentation. Paper 3 examines the Downsian median voter theorem from the perspective of primary election voters, asking if general election wins/losses beget the nomination of more ideological/moderate nominees next cycle. Ultimately, the article illustrates that the parties instead retain consistent records through both election wins and losses, linked to credibility concerns from position changes as well as the inability of members to disentangle from national party identities. Its companion paper, Paper 4, takes that Downsian question to elites in Washington, D.C. Through original interviews with twenty-three individuals including former members of Congress, leadership, congressional staff, and think tank scholars, I describe the electoral and legislative pressures that prevent officeholders from responding to their median voter, especially among those in swing districts most exposed to the risks of partisan behavior. Paper 5, the final paper, brings together the themes of those preceding it by analyzing the ways in which outside interference, specifically political action committees and more inclusive primary elections, propagates legislative caucus fragmentation and weakens official leadership. This work plays one minor role in providing prescriptive steps to improve and empower channels of dialogue in the U.S. legislative brancha - in spite of larger systemic sorting along geographical and partisan lines - and ensure the mediation of ideology between voters and their elected representatives results in policy solutions rather than gridlock.

► The theoretical debate over the ability of parties and leaders in the House of Representatives to influence legislative decision-making is at the center of…
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▼ The theoretical debate over the ability of parties and leaders in the House of Representatives to influence legislative decision-making is at the center of much of the literature on Congress. On the one hand, the Procedural Cartel perspective argues that while the tools used by the majority party leadership to assure the triumph of its preferences may vary depending on the institutional context, the basic ability of the leadership to impact legislative outcomes remains consistent. In contrast, Conditional Party Government (CPG) theory posits that any power the majority party and its leadership possesses over legislative decision-making is directly conditioned upon the amount of agreement within the majority party caucus as to collective goals, as well as the amount of ideological polarization that exists between the majority and minority parties. This thesis provides an original test of these two theoretical perspectives by evaluating their comparative ability to account for the proposal and passage of limitation riders on the House floor during the annual appropriations process since the 1980s. Limitation riders provide a good vehicle to test theories of congressional voting as they often have important policy implications in areas of significant controversy. In addition, the extent to which the individual members or legislative parties are able to successfully utilize limitation riders as a means of making substantive policy is indicative of larger patterns of committee or party domination of the floor process. After reviewing the relevant literature on congressional decision-making, this analysis proceeds to outline the theoretical predictions that the Procedural Cartel and CPG perspectives make regarding limitation riders. An original dataset comprised of over 800 limitation riders from the 97th through the 110th Congresses is analyzed both with respect to overall proposal and passage rates as well their party of origin. This study finds that while the CPG perspective is best able to account for what occurs during periods of low polarization and cohesion, Procedural Cartel provides the most accurate prediction of what occurs when polarization and cohesion are high. These findings suggest that, although these theories both have some ability to account for congressional decision-making on the House floor, both of these frameworks need to be revisited so that they can accurately account for what occurs during floor phase of the legislative process.
Advisors/Committee Members: Richard Clucas.

Tollestrup, J. S. (2010). Limitation Riders in the Postreform House: A Test of Procedural Cartel and Conditional Party Government Theories. (Masters Thesis). Portland State University. Retrieved from https://pdxscholar.library.pdx.edu/open_access_etds/398

Chicago Manual of Style (16th Edition):

Tollestrup, Jessica Scott. “Limitation Riders in the Postreform House: A Test of Procedural Cartel and Conditional Party Government Theories.” 2010. Masters Thesis, Portland State University. Accessed February 22, 2019.
https://pdxscholar.library.pdx.edu/open_access_etds/398.

Tollestrup JS. Limitation Riders in the Postreform House: A Test of Procedural Cartel and Conditional Party Government Theories. [Masters Thesis]. Portland State University; 2010. Available from: https://pdxscholar.library.pdx.edu/open_access_etds/398